WfJRKERS VANG(JAR'

25No. 344 X.-S23 16 December 1983WV PhotoSupport rally for Greyhound strikers in New York City, November 23-Labor must stop the buses! For a nationaltransport strike!See Page FiveLABORMARTYRRAYPHILLIPSnow amongst union members that thelabor movement didn't do right byPATCO. The leadership let them hangalone. So that now any union is fairgame. The labor movement was caughta little bit by surprise when PATCOhappened, Also there was a littledifficulty feeling much sympathy forthese guys that make $45.000 andfurthermore voted for that damn Rea-gan, But the issue was bigger than that.A lot of people knew it then. and a lotmore people know it now. And with theATU you're talking about drivers andblack women who clean the toilets in theterminals. It's one of the reasons that thelabor movement is really aroused. It'sreally felt. it canhappen here.What will it take to win') ComradeJames Cannon. \\ho \\as the leader andfounder of the Trotskyist mo\ement inthis country. said veryimpllrtant about strikes and strike,trategy, It wa, at the time there \\a' abig maritime ,trike on the Pacific Coastin 1936, He pointed out that a strike is abullheaded struggle bct\\een two forcescuntinued on page 2the 1978 coal strike, because he did thesame thing to those guys. He broughtthem two rotten packages. and they putboth of them in the bonfire. The wayforward is for elected strike committeesto run this strike, and that means theguys who want to run this strike have tosay no to this deal. The way we fight it ismass pickets. and we go to the rest of thelabor movement and we get backing,including national strike action by othertransport workers unions.Because the sentiment is there. Thiscomes after PATCO ,[the air trafficcontrollers union busted by Reagan in19t-\ I]. There's a widespread sentimentSEE PAGE SIXI wanted to start out talking about theGreyhound strike. I'm happy to sec thatthere's a lot of brothers from TransportLocal 100 who came tonight. because Ithink there is a recognition in the labormovement now that if they get Grey-hound. who's next? I think there's arecognition that there should have beenhundreds of union militants out therewith those guys helping to man picketlines so that those buses never got off thedock. The Teamsters. the railwayworkers. the airline workers-you'vegot to grind it to a halt.The problem is that the rank-and-fileATU [Amalgamated Transit Union]members have been left largely on theirown. and those guys tried, In Philadel-phia 1.300 of them and other unionistsin the city got out there the first day andstopped the buses for 12 hours.. But the4uestion is the leadership. Now a man isdead! A striker was hit by a scab driver.And those ATU leaders come back withthe same damn offer that Greyhoundput on the table in the first place. thattake-it-or-Ieave-it offer. So what arethey supposed to do in the face of this?There has to be a fight. They should takethe contract and burn it. Thev should dowhat the miners did to Arnold Miller in"The Class Struggle andthe Spartacist League"Today the \\'Orking class and its afliesface unprecedented union-husting at-tacks and a drin' t(}\l'ard nuclear warpursued hI' hoth capitalist parties, AsReagan lI'a,1 imtafling the anti-Sol'ietnuclear lIlissifes. Grcrhound strikersIlere lI'afk ing the picket lines. li'orkersneed a rel'ofl/tionarr program andlewienhip to 1I1ohili::e {he pOller oflahor alld hlacks agaillst tlieir classc',CI, "/'l!t'S. It (" Fe!},-;n,' heloH" {''feer/l!(JJ"UJiI t.i v(e:Jt:rttu[lun gj\"(.;"1 L,) i .YetiYor/.; transit lI'orker at an :\,YC puhlic//leeting Decelllher 9 titled, "The Cla,ls";trugglc and the Seartac/lt l.caglle.";-'?4-l'-1,,';<.< 16 December 1983 No. 344Marxist Working-Class Biweekly ofthe Spartacist League of the U.S.EDITOR: Jan NordenPRODUCTION MANAGER: Noah WilnerCIRCULATION MANAGER'. Darlene KamiuraEDITORIAL BOARD: Jon Brule, CharlesBurroughs, George Foster, Liz Gordon,Mary Jo McAl/ister, James Robertson,Reuben Samuels, Joseph Seymour,Marjorie StambergWorkers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) publishedbiweekly, skipping an issue in August anda week in December, by the SpartacistPublishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York.NY 10007. Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial),732-7861 (Business) Address all corre-spondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY10116. Domestic subscriptions: $5,00124issues. Second-class postage paid at NewYork, NY. POSTMASTER: Send addresschanges to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377,GPO, New York, NY 10116.Opinions expressed in signed artIcles orletters do not necessarily express the editorialviewpoint,WORKERSVIINGIJIIRIJpublic officials like [black DemocraticCongressman] Ron Dellums and [Ala-meda County supervisor] John George,and you're dragging behind also organi-zations like the Communist Party. Atthe demonstration [on October 29 inOakland] there were striking workers,interracial couples (lots of them) andpeople who had experience with brutali-ty at the hands of the police.South Africa-style justice is still a bigissue in this country. Look at the Taylorfamily case [in Montgomery, Alabama].Auto workers went down from Ohioand Michigan to mourn their mother,and their mourning is busted up by acouple of racist cops. They defendthemselves and they're up on chargesthat could land them in jail for years.But it's not just the South. right? We allknew that-;-we sawit happen in Brook-lyn. They beat our union brother [WillieTurks] to death because he was blackand he had the damn nerve to go out fora bagel and a beer after work.We've got "up South" racism too.And in this country it's really deep. Wehad a Civil War, which freed the slaves,but blacks are still on the bottom.You've got one nation, two races, one ontop of the other. And there's no way outunder this system. In the civil rightsmovement it took mass struggles to winanYlhing for black people. But the civilrights movement hit a dead end, becauseit couldn't answer what this system,meaning capitalism, does to blackpeople. And now some of the bestelements of that movement are presentlyaround this party, partly because it hasbeen in the forefront of fighting theKlan/Nazi fascist terror. Five times theytried to march-in Detroit, San Fran-cisco, Ann Arbor, Chicago and Wash-continued on page 11 Y.i"!!

For labor/Black StruggleThat's basically their message, thatblacks don't have a right to fight againstracist attacks and workers don't have aright to defend their pickets. It's one ofthe important things about the Ray andLauren case on the West Coast. [Duringthe national phone strike last AugustLauren Mozee, while on picket duty inSan Leandro, California, was hit in theface by a white racist scab supervisor,Michelle Rose Hansen, who called her a"black nigger bitch." Lauren defended nod the picket line, and hercompanion Ray Palmiero C;;lme to herassistance. Now they are fired andcharged with felonies carrying up toseven and a half years in prison.]What's important is that you've got areal hard core of the Bay Area labormovement behind that case. You've gota very impressive united-front defenseeffort, which includes many prominent.1 '"WV PhotoOakland, October 29-Hundreds rally to defense of Lauren Mozee and RayPalmiero.they're going to lay down, roll over andput their legs up in the air, both thegovernment and companies have feltemboldened and they've gone to out-right union-busting.and pulled out their wallets. Manyworkers, especially blacks, waved theirmoney in the air to ensure that thecollection would not pass them by.When Delgadillo returned to thepodium to thank the ATUers fortheir generosity and announced theamount donated'the' room filled withcheers.The Phone Strikers Defense Com-mittee's appearance was the highlightof this meeting. After being told bytheir union leaders to support adefeat-to vote for a 14 percenttakeaway contract-ATU ranks re-fused to let their anger and bitternessturn them away from supportingLauren and Ray. Strikers, especiallyblack workers, began to leave themeeting in disgust. A worker passing aWV salesman responded to our call fora national transport strike by saying,"We need a goddamn general strike!"If this contract stands it will representa defeat for all working people.Workers Vanguard salutes the gut-level fighting spirit and generosity theL.A. Greyhound strikers showed bytheir impressive support to the defenseof Lauren and Ray.

STOp THE RAelSr LAUREN L-J--if 'MUST ':' ( ".face, breaking her lip. Lauren ofcourse defended herself. Ray Pal-miero, her companion, was alsowalking the lines and came to her aid.Now they both face four years inprison as a result of this."The bosses are out to bust theunions, as Greyhound is trying to do toyour union here. All of labor is underthe gun. We can't allow the bosses toram their takebacks down our throats.All labor must stand together againstthe bosses. You need the support of alltransport to win against Greyhound.We will do whatever it takes to win thisstrike. If it takes shutting downcommunications, I will go back andfight for that in my union."This case is not just about twoindividual phone workers. This is anattack on all labor, an attack on thepicket line. Lauren and Ray need thesupport of all labor who defend thepicket line and the right to defendourselves against racist attack. I knowyou are but I would like youto contribute what you can and helpsupport these two phone workers.Thank you."Workers enthusiastically applaudedWhy is this happening now to thelabor movement? And why don't thelabor leaders fight? People are generallyaware that this country is going to war.The provocations are there, right? TheReagan government sends 269 peopleup in this Korean jetliner over strategicSoviet [military bases], and it gets shotdown. Or he's playing chicken with theSoviet navy in every ocean of the world,disabling Soviet subs. And thank godthe commanders of those submarinesare quite controlled in their response orwe might not be here tonight. Nowyou've got the raids in Lebanon againstthe Syrian positions, which is theSoviets' strategic ally in the Near East.So he's pushing it. This country isheaded for war.What stands in the way of that arebasically two things. One is Sovietnuclear power. We'd better be thankfulthat the Soviets have the bomb, becauseit's given us a little breathing space. Theother thing, in terms of this country'spreparations for war, is [U.S. rulers]want to militarize the American work-ing class so they can get us all to marchlock step. This union-busting and thiswitchhunting in the unions is the effortto quash any organized resistance to thewar drive in this country.The question of protectionism here isreally important because it's one of thetools that they use to line up workersbehind "our" government. Whip upnationalist sentiment in this countryagainst foreign workers, meanwhile thereal problem is these capitalist outfitsand how they're running this countryand this economy into the ground.These [anti-union] attacks are politi-cal And the reason whv the tahorleaders won t fight them is also political,because these guys stand foursquarebehind Reagan's war drive against theSoviet Union. The people that presentlylead the unions are mainly the peoplewho built their careers driving socialistsand militants out of the unions after the[Second World] War. That's who'sthere, and they've never fought. Sinceslap an injunction on you if you intendto stop the buses. The kind of policeterror that is normal in the blackcommunity is now being used againstthe labor movement. hot and heavy.Reagan's Anti-Soviet War Driveon the Home FrontLOS ANGELES, December 6-Fourhundred spirited Greyhound strikers,meeting today to discuss terms of theirtakeaway contract, dug deep into theirpockets and donated a grand total of$459.45 for the defense of victimizedphone strikers Lauren Mozee and RayPalmiero. This powerful display oflabor solidarity is a testament to thefighting spirit exhibited by the Amal-gamated Transit Union (ATU) rankand file throughout this strike. Thisimpressive amount of money wascollected from workers who haven'tseen a paycheck in over a month.Manuel Delgadillo, Phone StrikersDefense Committee representative,was introduced at the meeting bynoting that Manuel's local, CWA11502, donated $500 to the ATU strikefund. This announcement was greetedwarmly. Manuel explained the back-ground to the racist, anti-labor frame-up of Lauren and Ray and linked it tothe Greyhound strike:"Lauren Mozee, who is black, waswalking the picket line in San Leandrowhen a scab manager, who had beenvery provocative on the line, called hera 'black nigger bitch: struck her in theL.A. Greyhound Strikers GiveBig to Lauren and Ray Defensewhose interests are in constant andirreconcilable conflict. The partnershipof labor and capital is a lie. Theimmediate issue in every case is decidedby the relative strength of the two forcescompeting at the moment. The questionyou had better ask every time you gointo battle: who are your friends, whoare your potential ailies and who areyour enemies?The ATU is distributing a petition to[New York governor] Mario Cuomo torevoke the operating licenses of Grey-hound in this state. Now, what's theproblem with that? The problem isyou're going hat-in-hand to the verylabor-hating politicians who are bustingthis strike. Mario Cuomo is our Demo-cratic governor. Ed Koch is our Demo-cratic mayor. Whose cops are out therescabherding at Port Authority? Whosecops in most cities, which are run byDemocratic mayors, are out therebusting these pickets! Over a hundred ofthem have been arrested, a lot of thembeat up and thrown in jail. These are theguys [the Democratic mayors] who loveto hate city workers and bust the cityworkers unions. They're there to imple-ment Reagan's austerity. So you'regoing to go hat-in-hand to them?The other thing that they've beenpushing is this consumer boycott stuff.Your strength is not in appealing to thisamorphous mass of consumers out therewho are trying to get to Oshkosh. Yourstrength is in appealing to the uniondrivers, so that the passengers don'teven have to worry about a choicelJecause those buses aren't going to roll!In this strike you run right up againstthe question of the state. As Marxists wehave always maintained that the stateexists for the subjection of one class byanother .. society what the state exists for is tomaintain the capitalist exploitation ofthe working class. Because whose copsare out there trying to break thesestrikes? Whose courts are out theretrying to cripple the picket lines? Sure,you can have picket lines just as long asit's not more than three people. TheyClass StruggleSharpens...(continued from page 1)2 WORKERS VANGUARD-Defend Picket Lines! Defend Blacks!0$2/4 issues ofWomen and Revolution0$2/10 introductory issues ofWorkers Vanguard(includes Spartacist)"on1[,,,,M3 :;4%\4'. ,cU.

WV PhotoLauren Mozee and Ray Palmleroon the picket line in San Leandro,August 1983.Also. on December I Lauren and Rayfor the first time since the demonstra-tion went back to court, and supportersof theirs, unionists. Spartacist Leaguesupporters. Labor/Black League mem-bers organized their friends and othersupporters to come to the courtroom.And they packed the courtroom. Wejust had every seat in the entire court-room. And various members of theprosecution team and Michelle RoseHansen were heard to whisper to eachother, "They're everywhere!" [Laugh-ter.] And that's where we want to be,everywhere.So we want to continue to build thedefense effort and publicize this caseacross the country, but that takesmoney. And the Partisan DefenseCommittee is helping in raising fundsfor this case. So if you're here tonightand you haven't made a substantialdonation to this case, please, we'll takechecks, we'll take cash, we'll take almostanything. The publicity and the otheractivities must continue because. thesepeople cannot be allowed to go to jail.So in conclusion I just want to makethe point that the Spartacist League is asmall organization but we are a veryvital part of the struggle for survival andfor advancement of blacks and workingpeople in this country. Because, you see,we understand history, we understandthe big picture. We understand how thiscase fits into the history of the workingclass in this country, and we know thatour program for a multiracial vanguardparty which can actually lead theworking class in successful struggletoward the workers government is theonly hope for the workers of thiscountry and indeed of the world.SH'C}TiT DOWNtSHUT\T TIGHT!0$5/24 issues of Workers Vanguard(includes Spartacist) International ratesD New D Renewal $20/24 issues-Airmail$5/24 issues-Seamailo $2/9 issues of Young Spartacuswanted to continue to have any credibil-ity in the Bay Area. large numbers ofphone workers and other unionists. thesocialists of the Spartacist League. theLabor/Black League for Social Defenseand others. and many individuals whosimply could not stand by and not doanything about this case.And I think "'that one of the mostinteresting things in fact about thatgroup of people who came to thatdemonstration was there were a largenumber of integrated couples there whocame and brought their children. Now,that indicates something about the levelof people's commitment to seeing thatthis doesn't happen.Now, the demonstration itself. as Isaid, was very spirited. And in additionto that. the cop harassment that weexperienced during the course of thisdemonstration was way, way out ofproportion to anything that one couldhave imagined. We worked very hard inadvance with talking to the mayor.telling people exactly what we wanted todo. And during the course of thatdemonstration there were at least fourpeople who were hit by police motorcy-cle handlebars and mirrors on themotorcycles. When the march came intothe Alameda County Courthouse area.the police had a whole bank of motorcy-cles just waiting for the demonstrationto come in. As soon as the demonstra-tors moved around the corner in front ofthe courthouse, all of those motorcyclesstarted and came sweeping down thestreet to try and clear the street. So itwas very clear that they know too what'sgoing on. And this kind of cop harass-ment of Lauren and Ray and theirsupporters continues in the Bay Areatoday still.The Labor/Black League had workedvery hard at building this demonstra-tion. In the course of that building theytalked to pe'ople about this case and gota number of new members. so that theLabor/Black League in the Bay Areatoday now has over 50 members.The work is not done on this case.This is an ongoing united-front defenseeffort. And there have been severalthings that have happened since thatdemonstration. There was a benefit thatwas organized for the case of Laurenand Ray which was extremely wellattended, And at the time that thebenefit was over we had more copharassment, with four squad carscoming into the area, police followingLauren and Ray and their securityguard to a local restaurant and waitingfor them to come out, things like that.But nevertheless people stuck right byLauren and Ray and were not put off bythat.Name _Address _____________Phone (City State Zip _344Make checks payable/mall to: Spartaclst Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist LeagueMilitantdemonstratorsdemandfreedom andjobs forLauren and Rayin Oakland,October 29.against racist attack, and workers haveno right to defend their picket lines.Now, this is an outrage! And on manydifferent levels. In the first place, if youjust look at the incident itself. worsealtercations happen in Oakland barsevery Saturday night, believe me. But ona more general basis, look at what thismeans. Everyone in this room knows tosome degree the history of the strugglefor trade unions and their right to strikein this country. Those victories were notwon in negotiations. They were not wonin the courts. but they were won on thestreets. And on the streets things werenot friendly. There were hard-foughtbattles there. And believe me, when thebattles were through scabs were notwalking around on two legs going to thecourts and bringing charges againstpicketers.So this case is a really crystal clearexample of what the present rulers ofthis country have in store for workersand blacks. Unemployment. poverty,racial oppression, atomization in moreways than one. and if you don't like it-jail. Well, Lauren and Ray weren'tabout to take this. And neither were we.and neither was the working and blackpopulation of the city of Oakland andthe Oakland Bay Area. We want to tearup that message from those people andthrow it back in their faces.On October 29 a united-front dem-onstration [demanding] freedom andjobs back for Lauren and Ray was heldon the steps of the Alameda County~<"'ll~o0"Courthouse. Now,just the publicity thatattended the building of that der;non-stration, in fact, was a very major part ofwhy the day before that demonstrationthe District Attorney wound up drop-ping the great bodily injury clause fromone of the felony charges.If you look at the list in WorkersVanguard, the newspaper of the Sparta-cist League, of people who endorsed thiscase and endorsed this demonstration,you can see that the import andimplications of this case are very. veryclear. Individuals, Ron Dellums forexample, endorsed this demonstration.Any organization on the left in thiscountry who wanted to continue to haveany credibility with the working classendorsed this demonstration.And the demonstration itself wasextremely impressive. On October 29 wehad 400 very militant, serious, commit-ted people turn out. And they werecommitted to seeing that Lauren andRay don't go to jail. And I'm very happyto tell you that their committment infact does continue. It wasn't just for thatone day of that demonstration.So who were they? Well, they were,for example, what I think is the fightingcore of the union leadership of the BayArea, representing thousands of work-ers, local politicians from the area whoSpartacist League/Spartacus Youth LeaguePublic Offices-MARXIST LlTERATURE-Bay AreaFri.: 5:00-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 3:00-6:00 p.m.1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)Oakland, California Phone: (415) 835-1535New York CityTues.: 6:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.:12:00-4:00 p.m41 Warren St. (one block belowChambers St. near Church St.)New York, N.Y. Phone: (212) 267-1025ChicagoTues.: 5:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 2:00-5:30 p.m.523 S. Plymouth Court, 3rd FloorChicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 427-0003TorontoSat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m.299 Queen St. W., Suite 502Toronto, Ontario Phone: (416) 593-4138unemployment. Lauren and Ray werecharged with enough felony counts toput them in state prison for seven toeight years. The racist scab MichelleRose Hansen still has her job.So the message of this blatant act ofpoliticized racism is quite clear. Blackshave no right to defend themselvesWe reprint beloll' excerpts from apresentation hI' Deborah Mackson,secretary of the Partisan Defense Com-mittee, given at a New York City Spar-!acist League forum on December 9.Trotskyist Leagueof CanadaDefend Lauren and Ray!As you know. there was a very bitterphone strike last August. On the tenth ofthat month Lauren Mozee, a blackmother of two children, former BlackPanther, avowed socialist. member ofan opposition caucus within the CWA.the Militant Action Caucus. was doingher duty on the picket line in that Klan-infested area of California known asSan Leandro. With her fellow workers, she was defending the elementary rightsof every worker in this country. her job.her union and the right to strike.:\low. on that day Michelle RoseHansen. a racist low-level phone com-pany manager. crossed that picket lineand called Lauren a "black niggerbitch." She [Hansen] then hit her in theface. Lauren defended herself. And hercompanion and fellow unionist. fellowsoci'alist Ray Palmiero. son of Italianworking-class immigrants. came to herassistance.Now. over the next several daysLauren and Ray and every black andevery trade unionist in this countryreceived a message from a group ofrepresentatives of the bourgeois state,that being the phone company, theDistrict Attorney's office and the localpolice. Lauren and Ray were fired fromtheir jobs. Lauren and Ray were denied16 DECEMBER 19833Smash Thatcher Union-Busting! to the Printers Strike!Showdown for British LaborNewslineWarrington, England-Militant printers and other unionists defend picketline against Thatcher's scabherding cops.smash the gains of the working classeverywhere. The Iron Lady and herNATO allies are driving for nuclear waragainst the Soviet workers state. Athome she sends the police out to crackthe heads of workers and minorities,while she lauds Solidarnosc. the CIAcompany union for counterrevolutionin Poland. Thatcher hates the NGA,Thatcher hates the USSR-Defend theH'orkers unions, defend the workersstates'Miners are already on overtime ban.Ford workers are voting to strike inmeetings up and down the country. ThePOEU [Post Office Engineering Union]still has a fight to win after the cravencapitulation to the courts of their'leadership.' The powerful TGWU[Transport & General Workers Union]has promised full support-but the onlyreal support is to join the NGA in strikeaction right now! The ruling class freedthe Pentonville Five eleven years agowhen faced with the threat of a generalstrike. A general strike is what's on theagenda now. No TUC sellout-the TUemust back the NGA all the way, up toand including a general strike!All the important battles of theworking class have been won outside thebosses' courts-and outside the bosses'Parliament. But the Labour Partyleadership is telling you to crawl beforethe decisions of the bosses' courts andtheir laws. No way! The Labour Partywants constitutional windbaggery inWestminster. We want to win on thepicket lines!The Fleet Street vultures carryonabout 'union privileges.' What a filthyjoke! The British working c1ass-privileged? The only privileges workersin this country have are to live in theshadow of the dole in crumbling cities inthe most decaying economy in Europe.Every gain of union organisation, everysmall protection has been fought forover and over. It's vital to defend theworkers' fighting organisations. Victorynow can give a lead to all workers andoppressed and, with the construction ofa revolutionary leadership, open theroad to workers power. Build the Warrington mass pickets!Flying pickets from every union toshut Messenger down! All out on Fleet Street! For a nationalall-union print strike! TUC must back the NGA all the way,up to and including a general strike! Give Thatcher the Heath treatment-Mass action to bring down the Tories!Jobs for all, worksharing on full pay!Take the economy out of the bosses'hands-For socialist planning and aworkers soviet government!.working class is coming down. Thewhole union movement must respond inkind. Remember Saltley Gates-flyingpickets from every union should bepouring in to Warrington right now tobuild the mass pickets! Attempts tosmash the picket lines must be met withdetermination-for disciplined trade-union-organised defence squads! Thelockouts and provocations against theNGA's Fleet Street bastion show the"bosses want to smash the NGA, one ofBritain's strongest unions, built on theclosed shop and the union hiring list. ItsFleet Street chapels were in the fore-front of the Pentonville Five strike thatforced Heath to free the dockers' leadersin 1972. Answer lockouts and thejuridical theft of NGA assets with massoccupations. What is posed is notsimply the defence of the NGA but ofthe entire trade-union movement. Ifthey beat the NGA, who will be next?Not a penny of union money to thecapitalist courts-no reliance on thedead-end of arbitration. Reinstate allsacked workers! Drop all chargesagainst arrestedpicketers! Smash all theTory anti-union laws-Picket linesmean don't cross! Take on the bosses'union-bashing provocation-All out onFleet Street! For a national all-unionprint strike!The government attacks on theunions are part of a political drive toconnected right wing and the "littleEngland" left social democrats likeTony Benn. The Labour rights haveopenly denounced the printers for"illegality" and "violence" as unionpickets are brutally attacked by Thatch-er's cops. We say: Drive the NATO-loving right wing out of the LabourParty! Meanwhile, the Labour "lefts"have done nothing except talk aboutchanging the Tories' anti-union legisla-Spartacist League Says:Defend the NGA-Defeat theTory Union Bashers!Tuesday night Maggie Thatcher'shelmeted and visored boot boys ram-paged against union picketers in War-rington, injuring and arresting dozensand destroying the NGA van and soundsystem. The fist of Tory hatred for thetion in the great by-and-by. But whenthey are in office the Labour Partytops-agents of the bourgeoisie in theworkers movement-do their best tosuppress working-class struggle. Re-member Callaghan's "social contract" inthe mid-1970s. The printers strike mustand will be won on the picket linesagainst the defeatist policies of theLabour Party and TUC bureaucracy.We reprint below a leaflet issued onNovember 30 by the Spartacist League/Britain on this critical class battle.Cowboy Reagan and Iron LadyThatcher personify capitalist reactionamid the worst economic conditionssince the Great Depression of the 1930s.Their program: break the power oforganized labor to increase the rate ofexploitation; slash social services andsocial-welfare programs; prepare forwar against the Soviet Union. Theymust be brought down by mass strikeaction!Within months of coming to officeReagan fired an entire union of strikingair controllers (PATCO). The destruc-tion of PATCO set the stage for the give-back contracts throughout U,S, indus-try and encouraged further union-busting now centered on Greyhound.The British trade-union movement isstronger, more entrenched and far morecombative than the American. Despitedepression-level unemployment, in partdeliberately induced by Thatcher'smonetarist economics, union power atthe base has not been broken.Last year Thatcher launched a frontalassault: the Tebbit Act. This law aims todestroy the strong closed-shop traditionof the British labor movement. Unionsare now subject to fines up to 250,000($360,000) for engaging in "secondaryboycotts" and industrial actions deemed"political." Now the attempt by a small,right-wing publisher in northern Eng-land to break the closed-shop agreementwith the National Graphical Associa-tion (NGA, printers union) has drawnthe battle line against Tebbit and theentire Tory union-busting offensive. OnNovember 29, 4,000 members of theNGA and other trade-union supportersconfronted 2,000 scabherding cops.British labor must not lose this fight.The Spartacist League/Britain is agitat-ing for a national printers strike andsupport action by the Trades UnionCongress (TUq, if necessary with ageneral strike. At a support rally inManchester on December lour com-rades led militants in chants of "Shutdown Fleet Street!" the center of theBritish newspaper industry.The industrial showdown over theprinters strike has predictably aggravat-ed the Cold War split in the LabourParty between the NATO-loyal, CIA- Greyhound Union-Busting]Militants Campaignfor a Fighting TWUThe current elections in New YorkCity's Transport Workers Union(TWU) Local 100 offer an especiallyclear choice between class-strugglepolitics and the bureaucracy's capitu-lation to all-out union-busting. Thecampaign of the Committee for aFighting TWU-which is running EdKartsen for president, David Brewerand Jim Smith for executive board oftheir respective divisions-has focusedon the need for a national transportstrike to defeat Greyhound's union-busting attack on the brothers of theAmalgamated Transit Union (ATU).The John Lawe regime ofTWU Local100 sabotaged any effective action insupport of the Greyhound strike. Atbottom these bureaucrats are demon-strating their loyalty to the Democrat-ic Party and the capitalist system itrepresents. The Committee for aFighting TWU says: Break with theDemocrats-For a workers partyto fight for a workers go.vernment!We reprint below excerpts from EdKartsen's presentation at a forum on"The Class Struggle and the Spar-tacist League" in New York City,December 9,During these elections we haven'tbeen on the basis ofrunning simply for posts. We've beenfighting for the program that willadvance the working class, defend it,unite it against the attacks by manage-ment, reasserting the basic founda-tions of trade unionism like the picketline. It means don't cross and not forinformation. We're not about a gameof grandstanding for the Democratsand blowing a lot of hot steam.In the TWU a motion was putforward in a number of meetings:"Greyhound's scabherding union-busting attack on the AmalgamatedTransit Union (ATU) is an attack onnot only the transport workers unionsbut the entire labor movement likeReagan's attack on PATeO. What'sreally needed is a solid nationaltransport workers strike to stop thisunion-busting crap, We should mobi-lize our members and the entire unionto get out to help man the ATU picketlines. We need labor power not protestgestures. A nationwide transportstrike and round-the-clock masspickets can stop those buses fromrolling over American tradeunionism."That motion passed in one section ofthe Transport Workers Union, ameeting of track workers. The central[TWU] bureaucracy, however, didtheir "part" to go down to the ATUdemonstration at Port Authority,[treating it] primarily as a big pep rallyfor John Lawe. Members of theCommittee for a Fighting TWU werethere at the rally a few weeks ago. Andone demand that was raised, one chantthat was raised was taken up by theentire crowd in the face of all theDemocratic Party speakers and a lot ofthe hot air that the bureaucracy wasputting out. The demand was "Stopthe buses!" This chant was taken up.Unfortunately, the AFL-CIO leader-ship that ran that rally was too busytrying to stay within the confines ofacceptable business unionism, provid-in-g a platform for the "respectable"Democratic politicians. Now an ATUstriker is dead, killed by a scabprotected by the bosses' cops, which inmany cities are called out by these so-called "friends of labor," the Demo-crats. And the AFL-CIO leadershiphas not lifted a finger to close downevery transport facility in this country,which is what is needed.This election has laid a foundationfor fighting for a leadership that'sgoing to lead the TWU out of thisquagmire. Because what's needed is aleadership that's not going to dampen,dilute or weaken the struggle of theworking class particularly at momentswhen it's most important to fight. Theworking class needs its own party, notthe Democrats or Republicans. Weneed a party that's going to fight tomobilize to smash the Klan and finishthe Civil War. The fight continues tobuild the kind of militant leadershipthat will form a general staff of aworking-class counteroffensive.4 WORKERS VANGUARDGreyhound Scab Driver Runs Down Strike Picket Cap-tainRay Phillips: Labor MartyrNo Surrender-Tear the Sellout Contract!Beat Greyhound!For aNational Transport Strike!CLEVELAND, December 9-Six hun-dred transport workers from allover thecountry jammed into the tiJl.Y LutheranReformation Church in Eastlake, Ohioto attend t he last rites for Raymond L.Phillips. Brother Ray was murdered incold blood by a scab Greyhound driveron December 5 while picketing outsideZanesville, Ohio, about three hourssouth of Cleveland.The somber church ceremony wasfollowed by a car caravan to theWilloughby Lakefront Cemetery.There, surrounded by hundreds of hisunion brothers and sisters huddled in aheavy snowfall, with a three-roundsalute from the local VFW, to thesounds of taps and the gentle sobbing ofhis grieving wife and mother, RayPhillips was buried.Ray was a union martyr in the waragainst labor being waged by Reaganand all the bosses. A well-known andrespected member of AmalgamatedTransit Union Local 1043 in Cleveland,at the age of 42 he had been aGreyhound driver for 13 years. He was avery militant rough-hewn guy opposedto all the givebacks in the currentcontract. He defended the picket line,declaring in a local television interVIewthat ATUers "were not going to crossthe picket lines to go back to work forthe same conditions they'd been out herefighting for." He was the picket captainThe union has announced it is inthe process of setting up a fund forthe support of Ray's wife Linda andtheir four children. Checks shouldbe made out to AmalgamatedTransit t;nion Local 1043 andearmarked for the Ray PhillipsMemorial Fund. The PartisanDefense Committee has made adonation and urges readers ofWorkers Vanguard to do likewise.Send to: Amalgamated TransitUnion Local 1043, c/o RichardScott, Financial Secretary, 1538Payne Ave., Cleveland, OH 44114.Despite company and cop violenceand bureaucratic sabotage, strikingGreyhound workers of the Amalgamat-ed Transit Union (ATtJ) along withthousands of active supporters through-out the labor movement have snc'wnplenty of willingness to fight. In Phila-delphia on :'\O\cmber 29 a caravan ofTeamsters in fifteen 40-foot semis.do/ens of cars and one horse-drawncarriage blocked the Greyhound stationat the height of the morning rush hour.There were mass labor rallies in :"\<:wYork, Boston and San Francisco Butunion officials have limited picket lim'sand diverted militant picketers fromstopping buses.And now ATU leaders, in connivancewith the AFL-CIO tops and federalmediators, are trying to shove a horren-dous contract (includ ing a 15 percentcut in wages and benefits) down thethroats of the ranks. The deaL virtually16 DECEMBER 1983of a crew at the lines out in front of theGreyhound terminal on Chester Avenuein downtown Cleveland. Rayappreciat-ed all expressions of solidarity with thestrikers and understood the importanceof labor unity to prevent any morePATCOs. He was very friendly withWorkers Vanguard, purchased ourpaper on at least two occasions andtalked with us at length. Our comradesremember Ray as a decent and honestunionist' with determination andcommitment.Greyhound had not felt confidentenough to challenge the militant tradi-tions of Ohio Teamsters or ATU Local1043, which had wildcatted at theexpiration of two previous contracts.The company has not been runningbuses out of Ohio. But when unionistslearned that Greyhound was opening aidentical to one rejected by a 96 percentmargin two \\ eeks ago. would retainscabs "in order of seniority." And therewill bc pknty of openings for them.bccause there's no provision for am-nesty for strikers facing criminal andfederal charges. If this goes through. thebloody murderers of Ray Phillips willget a":ly \\ ilh Crings and huge pay cuts,and all labor will be weakened. ATl'members: tear up Greyhound's surren-der terms and vote it down! A centraldemand of any settlement must be torehire all strikers with no disciplines! Nomore sellouts: for elected strike commit-tees to select a new national bargainingcouncil! ATU strikers must forge linkswith Teamsters. longshoremen, transitworkers. rail and airline workers. Formass picketing to stop the buses! For anational transport strike!In San Francisco it was evident thatthe 1,500 Bay Area trade unionists whotrall1ll1g school for scab drivers inZanesville, Ray Phillips was amongscores of ATU members from Cleve-land, Columbus, Pittsburgh andCharleston who volunteered to go downand picket. On December 5, somepicketers approached an unmarked scabbus at the intersection of Ohio Routes797 and 40. Scab Lewis Harris accelerat-ed through a stop sign and blinking redlight while making a left turn. HugoFox, an ATU eyewitness, describedwhat happened: "Ray Phillips waswalking in front, shaking his fist at thebus. The instructor (who was in thefront of the bus with the trainee)motioned for the driver to go ahead. Thebus sped up. Ray tried to jump out of theway. His feet got tangled up and hetripped. The bus ran over his legs. Youcould hear the pop.... I was holleringrallied December 3 wanted militantaction. not impotent protest. Accordingto an account in the December 9"Longshore-Warehouse Militant":"In S.F.. December 3. thi: bureaucratstried the sanK stor\' on 0\ er 1500 yenmilitant unionists 'who rallied in sup'-port of the Gre\hound strikers. AftL:royer an hour of boring 'wc're with \,ou100 pcrcent" speeches members.who were rcali\' to shut it down.marched down 'vlarket Street to theGreyhound Terminal. chantinl! 'OnStrike' Shut it Down!' thi:long-w inded bureaucrats \\ ere nowhcreto be seen \\ hen the angry unioniststried to l!et into the locked terminal. it looked like somethingmilitant would happen. the bureaucratsjumped in to 'control" the situation. Butin spite of pleas, by' \'arious union'It;aders' to disperse. the angry unionmembers continued to demonstrate.shutting down traffic for nearly twohours, shouting 'No More PO\TCO\!'and 'Picket l.ines Mean Don't Cross"The bureaucrats wanted to protest, but'Hold it. Hold it.'" (Akron BeaconJournal, 6 December). But the busdidn't hold it. As Ray was trying tocrawl out of the way the back wheelswent over him, crushing his skull. Thebus continued on for more than a mile.before a sheriffs deputy pulled it over.The immediate aftermath was shockand outrage. Within hours ColumbusATUers sent a memorial pine wreathwith a large black ribbon to Cleveland.It was quickly posted next to a make-shift sign reading "Greyhound causedthe death of our friend" in front of theChester Avenue terminal. When news ofthe homicide reached Pittsburgh scoresof ATUers, many of whom knew Rayfrom his frequent runs through that city,spontaneously showed up at their picketlines and held an impromptu memorial.The next day over 200 unionists wear-ing black armbands-Cleveland Grey-hound workers in uniform, meatcutters,roofers, machinists and commu-nications workers-marched grimlythrough Zanesville chanting, "Arrestthe killer scab, the whole world iswatching!"Outrageously, neither the scab drivernor any of his trainers were charged inconnection with this foul murder. OnDecember 13 the Muskingum Countyprosecutor announced that Phillips'death was "accidental" and no indict-ments would be issued. The courts ruledit was legal to murder strikers! Theobvious partiality of the cops and courtsbecame a major focus in a protestmemorial held in downtown Clevelandon December 7. About 200 marchedthrough the bitter cold: hand-letteredsigns read "Brother Ray is on eachpicket line" and "Ohio is a right-to-killstate."Two days later seven busloads ofATUers-two each from Pittsburghand Columbus, and one from Philadel-phia, Buffalo and Cincinnati-werethere to honor Ray Phillips. Black andwhite unionists formed car pools totravel from Chicago and Detroit.continued on paf!e 11the workers wanted to fight! They knowthat if Greyhound's union busting isn'tdefeated they will be next."In San Francisco, where the industri-al unions were forged out of thepowerful general strike in 1934, senti-ment for labor solidarity is particularlystrong. So the bureaucrats talk moremilitant there. ILWU top Jimmy Her-man claims he's for a port shutdown "ifcalled upon"-while doing everythingpossible to make sure that no one callsupon him. No longshoreman takesHarman seriously in his oft-repeatedthreat. as he has consistently repressedstrike action against the bosses and linesup his union behind Reagan's anti-Soviet war drive. His real role \vasrevealed when he personally interposedhimself to help disperse picketers whosought to blockade the SF Greyhoundterminal on December 3.The real fighters for class-struggleaction have been the Spartacist I.eagueand class-struggle caucuses in theunions such as the Militant Actioncontinued on page J1NOTICEWorkers Vanguardskips a week inDecember.Our next issue will bedated January 6.5Jesse Jackson:Front Manfor the Racist Democratsu.s. Rulers Fear Black Militancy,_.t .,.,Jesse Jackson is part of the problemof racist reaction. not part of thesolution. Black people in America'sghettos are suffering as never before.Anything seems better than continuingunder the whip of Reagan racism. Blacklives are on the line. and there is anincreasing understanding that it meansstruggle or die. But Jesse Jackson is notpart of that struggle. His role is to stopblack struggle before it starts. Hiscampaign is not about getting anythingfor black people. it is about helping theDemocrats take away even more.Jackson is a shill in Walter Mondale'sgame. The way the scenario goes:Mondale gets the presidency. Jacksongets to strut around the Democraticconvention talking in rhyme and soak-ing up the media. and the black massesget more of the same ... shit. Aftervoting for Reagan'swar-and-starvationhudgets. the Democrats are trying to sellthe same cutback-takeback-rollbackpolitics all over again. We say: Don'tbuy Jesse Jackson! We need to fightback. to hring Reagan down with lahar!hlack action'It was the hlack vote which ejectedJimmy ("ethnic purity") Carter in 1976.In 19RO. after four years of racistcuthacks. black people stayed awayfrom the polls in record numhers. '\owthe Democrats badly need the hlackvote to elect Carter's YP. They figurethey need 25 percent more hlack votersparticularly in the South to tip theelectoral halance in favor of Mondale.But they know blacks aren't going toregister in big numbers for "Fritz."So Jackson's job is to try to convinceblack people that the Democratic Partycan be made to work for them ratherthan in the interests of the racistcapitalist system. When Jesse Jacksonsingsongs "There's a freedom train acomin'. but you got to register to ride."he's selling the Democratic ticket-fromthe Dixiecrats to the Northern liberalswho knifed busing as soon as it was aquestion of integrating schools in theirWe reprint below some remarks onthe Jesse Jackson candidacy madeby an SL spokesman at the forum"The Class Struggle and the Sparta-eist League" in New York City onDecember 9.It's no secret that blacks have beenunder attack, especially under Reaganand even before. But it's also no secret,especially to the ruling class, thatblacks in this country are not helplessvictims. Anybody who lived throughthe '60s knows that the mass strugglesof black people ripped up this country.Not always in ways that were in theinterests of blacks. It's not such a goodidea to smash all the stores in theghetto. But black people in the '60sripped up this country! So what weused to call the white power structure isa little frightened of black militancy;they know that in most industries-60..::J~-""()'" Eo~Jesse Jacksonglad-handsGeorge "Segre-gation Forever"Wallace, inattempt to sellDixiecrats toblacks: "Thereappears, amongthe Democrats,to be a generaltheme ofredemption andreconciliation."-JesseJackson,1983districts.The Democratic bigwigs want toreconcile black voters to the racistDixiecrats as part of their "Southernstrategy." So there was Jesse Jacksonlast spring hugging George ("Segrega-tion Forever") Wallace in the Mont-gomery. Alabama state house-thecradle of the old slavocracy-andwhooping: "The South can rise again!"Jesse Jackson will do anything."Our time has come." says Jacksonover and over again. But is it time forstruggle? Not according to this dema-gogue for the Democrats. In the heat ofauto. steel, the docks, transit-thereare a lot of black workers who couldshut this country down.But if you're going to attack blacksin this country. you can't just do it withguys like New York's despicable racistmayor Ed Koch. who got run out ofHarlem [at hearings on police brutalitylast July]. If Ed Koch was mayor ofDetroit, the blacks would burn downthe Renaissance Center and would betaking over all the auto plants. If EdKoch was mayor of Washington.D.C., which is 70 percent black,Reagan would really need all those[dump trucks] they're bringing intothe White House.So at the same time that you get allthese attacks on the black masses, youalso get the election of all these blackmayors, these black front men whombla<;ks have illusions in and canthe struggle for busing Jackson made hisposition clear while racist mobs stonedblack school kids on the streets ofBoston and burned buses in Michigan.The Chicago Tribune (19 May 1974)exposed Jackson's hostility to busing:":\either blacks nor whites really wantintegration. the Rev. Jesse Jackson says.and the time has come to abandon thefight to establish a racially integratedsociety."Since the days of Franklin Rooseveltblack votes have been used to electDemocrats. And what do black Ameri-cans have to show for it? Devastatingidentify with. The cops protecting theGreyhound scabs in New York areKoch's cops. But not in Chicago. InChicago they're Harold Washington'scops. in Detroit they're ColemanYoung's cops, in Washington they'rethe cops of Marion Barry, who likeJackson used to be a big civil rightsactivist.Blacks knoll' that Reagan is theirenemy, they know that Ed Koch istheir enemy, they know that GeorgeWallace, whom Jackson embraced, istheir enemy. The really insidiousenemies of black struggle, the enemieswithin. are the Coleman Youngs.Harold Washingtons and Jesse Jack-sons. The struggle against the blackDemocrats as well as the openly racistwhite Democrats is critical to blackliberation and finishing the Civil Warin!his country.unemployment which attacks everyaspect of social life like a cancer.increasing segregation and more "sepa-rate but unequal" legislation. some ofthe most miserable ghettos in the worldravaged by cop terror. and wars whichtake our children as cannon fodder. Andit keeps getting worse.Conditions for hlack people 111America have hecome so hellish thatsectors of the ruling class fear anexplosion of hlack anger. anything fromghetto upheavals to industrial action byblack workers. The Democrats want toexploit this sentiment to get their man inthe White House in '84. But to appeal toimpoverished blacks with their backs tothe wall. they need someone with theimage of an anti-establishment maver-ick. someone like Jesse Jackson. Hecalls up memories of the '60s civil rightsstruggles in order to deny their relevancetoda) --to say that blacks should getwhat they can by other means. hyIC\crage and maneU\ering within theDemocratic Party. if only they will giveJackson the electoral clout he nceds tobargain with.To head off the potential for explo-sive struggles against black oppression..Jesse Jackson is trying to drain hlackanger in a presidential protest vote.Thus his campaign is an allae/.; on themass militant struggles of the '60s.Speaking recently at a communitycollege in Manhattan. Jackson toldblack and Latino students:"You cannot sen e the al!e of those whosat in. you cannot sene the age of those\\ho rode the f1aminl! huses. you cannotsene the age of th()se who 'fought theVietnam War...."We need not explode through riots aswe had to in 'oJ to he heard .... We canuse the hallot to bring ahout change andtransition through elections and nothloody revolution.". The fact is the gains of the civil rightsmovement. minimal as those gains were.were made only because hundreds ofthousands of hlacks occupied segregat-ed restaurants, stores and public facili-ties. organized bus boycotts and rentstrikes.Food stamps. Medicaid. CETA andthe rest were funneled into the ghettosbecause the white rulers feared socialexplosion in their cities. But it wasnowhere near enough. So they boughtoff a layer of black hustlers-first aspoverty pimps and then as "blackelected officials," the so-called BEOs-to act as overseers for America's 20thcentury urban plantations. That was theend of the phony "war on poverty." Sonow they cynically declare ketchup avegetable, cancel lunches for blackschool kids to pay for MX missiles,while the Ku Klux Klan lynches inMobile and a racist Orange County copcan shoot a five-year-old black child,Patrick Mason. in his own home andthen get a lifetime pension as a bounty.Black liberation will not come fromvoting for the racist. capitalist Demo-cratic Party. That will only lead toanother defeat. Power for the blackmasses will come from militant classstruggles like last year's Novemher 27LaqorIB l a c ~ . ~ obilization that stoppedthe KKK from parading in thenation.'sWORKERS VANGUARDWashington PostWashington, D.C., 27 November 1982-S,OOO-strong Labor/Black Mobili-zation, Initiated and prlncipaUy organized by the Spartacist League, stopsKKK from marching In the nation'. capital.16 DECEMBER 1983capital. Black demagogues like Jacksonmust be defeated politically by a class-struggle labor movement that links theghetto to the factory and makes thecause of black freedom and working-class internationalism its own.Jesse Jackson: All-PurposeCapitalist AgentJesse Jackson is a well-known item inthe black community. In his Chicagobase of operations he has been the blackfront man for everyone from Coca-Colato the Uncola, for the giant whitecorporations and the small parasiticghetto businesses-all for a price.Jackson has gone to the Near Eastwhere he kissed Arafat in expectation ofsome Arab bucks. Now he comes out forU.S. "strategic cooperation" with Israelto kill Palestinians. And he is opposedto unilateral withdrawal of U.S. troopsfrom Lebanon.On a tour of racist South Africa in1979, Jackson infuriated black powermilitants when he met with ChiefButhelezi, government-appointed headof the Zulu "bantustan" (those desolateconcentration camps for dispossessedblacks which are a principal institutionof apartheid). Jackson also praisedPieter Kornhof, South Africa's ministerfor "Black Affairs" (equivalent toHitler's minister of "Jewish Affairs,"Adolph Eichmann) as a "courageousman" for some cosmetic "reforms" ofapartheid. A leader of the Soweto blackghetto denounced Jackson as a "diaboli-cal Western agent"; another militantremarked that what was needed was "aBlack Panther, not a black preacher."Most importantly, Jackson sharesfundamental political agreement withboth capitalist parties on the centralquestion of this period: the anti-Sovietwar drive. Recently grandstanding atthe Berlin Wall, Jackson sounded for allthe world like a PR man for NATOheadquarters. He told black GIs onReagan's front lines in Germany, "If theAmerican conventional forces were topull out of Europe, that wall wouldbegin to walk. The Iron Curtain wouldbegin to shift" (Village Voice, 4 Octo-ber). Many blacks do not weep forReagan's and Mondale's and Jackson'sfavorite union, Solidarnosc, in partbecause they see that Polish workers eata lot more meat than Harlem residents.Quite a few believe that if"the wall" didmove to the west of the Newark ghettoor Chicago's South Side they'd be a lotbetter off.In the 1960s even the right wing of thecivil rights movement felt compelled topay lip service to the struggle of blackworkers. Martin Luther King wasassassinated in Memphis where he w a ~leading demonstrations of strikingblack sanitation workers. Today BEOsfrom Andrew Young to Harold Wash-ington are the black face ofa Democrat-ic machine that pretends to be a "friendof labor" on the campaign trail anddelivers takebacks and strikebreakingwhen elected. But Jackson represents al/)~'" CLco"EoCl"When you keepthe Democratsin power, you'rekeeping theDixiecrats inpower."-Malcolm X,1964more sinister kind of black politicianexemplified also by Brooklyn's AlbertVann and Rev. Herbert Daughtry,demagogues who led a capitalist on-slaught against the unions in the 1968NYC teachers strike. They exploit thedangerous racial polarization engen-dered by massive black poverty andunemployment combined with theindifference and discriminating job-trusting on the part of the Americanlabor bureaucracy. It's the same gameNazi-lover Henry Ford played in con-junction with Detroit black preachers:using blacks as scabs to break theulllons.In the "Rainbow Coalition" there isno room for unions as Jesse Jacksonsells himself to the Henry Fords oftoday's corporate America. During the1980 Chicago firemen's strike, Jacksontried to lead a strikebreaking back-to-work movement; when that fizzled hewent to work for then-mayor JaneByrne as negotiator for the city. Jacksonattacks organiled labor for not provid-ing jobs for blacks. But his main targethas been the 55 percent black ChicagoTeachers Union (CTU). His enemy isthe integrated labor movement. In boththe 1976 and 1983 CTU strikes, Jacksonattempted to organize "alternate" scabschools and sued the union, claiming thestrike was against the black community.Fortunatcly. these racially explosiveunion-busting antics flopped. Had theynot. in the streets of Chicago blacks andlabor would have drowned in theensuing bloodshed.Jackson even attacks the lowest paidand therefore mostly black workers.Echoing Reagan, Jackson told "Meetthe Press" in 1978 that extending theminimum wage to teenagers meant "formany millions of young black andbrown teenagers in small marginalbusinesses they simply missed jobopportunities." But there are some folkswho draw a government paycheck thatJackson does have sympathy for: prisonguards! When the screws at CookCounty Jail got the "blue flu" in 1980,Jackson acted as their negotiator,helping them organize picket lines andturning PUSH headquarters over fortheir meeting hall.There is one issue that Jackson doessee eye-to-eye with the AFL-CIO tops aswell as Mondale and George Wallace:protectionism. When Jackson wasdown at the Alabama state housepraising "Jeff" Davis, he also played toracist protectionist sentiments (whichfind support not only among whites buteven among many black workers),railing at "Honda and Toyota, Suzukiand Yamaha, Sony and Panasonic,being unloaded at the docks andreplacing Buick and Chrysler in theAmerican market" (Washington Post,25 May). Protectionism breeds imperi-alist war abroad and race war at home.For American workers, black andwhite. the main enemy is right here inthe U.S. of A."Black Power" andthe Black Mayors"Voting: The !\ew Black Power"reads the front page of the Ne\1' YorkTimes ;Hagazine (27 November). Thetalk of "black power" at the votingbooth has become deafening especiallysince the election of Harold Washingtonin Chicago. But blacks swing almost noweight in the Democratic Party, andthese days mainstream Democrats don'teven bother to make promises. Even inpurely parliamentary terms, blacks arevirtually unrepresented. More than acentury after the Civil War there are noblack senators, no black governors;there's not about to be a black presidentand everybody knows it. Not since theperiod of radical Reconstruction afterthe Civil War have black Americanswielded any real power in government.What has the election of the BEOsdone for the black masses? Just look atAmerica's "inner cities." From Atlantato Los Angeles these black Democratspreside over the murderous work of theracist cops who terrorize ghetto streets.Richard Hatcher, one of the first blackmayors, oversees Gary, Indiana-one-time U.S. Steeltown, now practical-ly a ghost town. What about Newark,which has had a black mayor for almosta decade and a half? Ever since he gotinto office (with the aid of PrudentialInsurance Co.) and tried to break the1970 teachers strike, Mayor KennethGibson has administered the devasta-tion of Newark, now officially thepoorest big city in the country. OrDetroit, where Coleman Young brokethe strike of the mainly black sanitationworkers in order to welcome the 1980Republican convention that nominatedRonald Reagan; where this black traitorrubs elbows with Henry Ford II andcynically proclaims a "Renaissance"while the auto plants are bulldozed. Isthat "black power"?Jackson's campaign was launchedfrom the successful voter registrationdrive which helped elect Harold Wash-ington in Chicago. Unlike Washington,Jackson isn't running to win. In partbecause Washington had a chance to getelected, his campaign and election weremet with a fierce racist backlash. Whenthis racist mobilization threatened toprevent him from assuming the normalprerogatives of elective office, wedefended his democratic rights. Butamid the euphoria and illusions generat-ed by his campaign and electoralvictory, we told the truth: "HaroldWashington Will Betray Black Chica-go," was the headline in WorkersVanguard. And that betrayal of blackaspirations in Chicago has startedalready. Layoffs of black and white cityworkers have taken place with more tocome. Washington has made his pactwith the rulers of Segregation City:there will be no busing, no attempt todesegregate housing. Racist cops terror-ize the South Side ghetto just as before.The BEOs are making it on the backsof the black masses. The creation of asomewhat wider petty bourgeoisie sincethe civil rights movement and thedevastating attacks on the vast majorityof black people go hand in hand. Nowonder this totally phony "New BlackPower" is hailed by the capitalist class,even its most conservative voices. TheWall Street Journal (28 November) metthe Jackson campaign with a leadeditorial titled "Je$$e for Pre$ident,"opining that:..... Mr. Jackson's candidacv is anothersign of the black community movinginto the political mainstream. And this.as we noted recently in discussing therise of black mavors. bodes well notonly for blacks 'but for the societygenerally."Jesse and the Left:On the Road to MondaleUnlike the black masses, the reformistleft has no illusions about Jackson-they're building illusions. They arecynically supporting him and otherblack Democrats (Harold Washingtonin Chicago) as the easiest road into theanti-Reagan popular front. And for thatthey're more than willing to do thehustle with Jesse. peddling this "blackcapitalist" operator as a "challenge" tothe capitalist system.The most fervent builders of a "1984all people's electoral front to defeatReagan and all the anti-labor, racistanti-people Reaganites" are, of course,the ultra-reformist Stalinists of theCommunist Party (CP). At its recentconvention in Cleveland, CP superstarAngela Davis talked of "the historiccandidacy of Rev. Jesse Jackson," whilethe party announced it would not fieldits own candidates until after theDemocratic primaries. But the CP,which is so craven that it even chasesafter the likes of Mondale, worries:"Some progressives are opposed to theRev. Jesse Jackson's candidacy for theDemocratic Party's nomination for thepresidency because they fear such acandidacy might split the anti-Reaganfront"Not to worry, argues the CP, "it willstrengthen, not detract from, the anti-Reagan front" because "his base ofsupport, the Black community, repre-sents a crucial component of theemerging independent political front.'"Translated into English, the CP issaying, truthfully, that Jackson is astalking horse for Mondale.The Communist Party has _ beencontinued 011 ~ ,7Make checks payable/mall to:Spartaclst PUblishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116The comparison to Booker T.Washington is an important and reveal-ing one. For Jesse Jackson is not thefirst "Mr. Black Capitalism." That titlebelongs to Booker T. Washington whoemerged as the most influential propo-nent of black accommodation to theracist status quo in the late nineteenthcentury. His movement was born in thewreckage of the political counterrevolu-tion which defeated Reconstruction.With the Compromise of 1877, theDemocrats and Republicans strippedblack Americans of all the rights theyhad won under Reconstruction whilethe Ku Klux Klan emerged as theterrorist arm to keep them down. YetBooker T. Washington and the tiny elitestratum of black middle-class profes-sional men responded to the enforce-ment of vicious J im Crow segregation asthough it were a positive, exploitabledevelopment for black people.At the heart of Booker T. Wash-ington's movement was the idea of aseparate black capitalist development inAmerica. His National Negro BusinessLeague filled convention rooms acrossthe land extolling the great opportuni-ties and successes of black business. Bysupplying the needs of the ghetto. theyargued, the black businessmen wouldget rich and the black masses wouldachieve equality. despite the evidentbarriers of racism. Useful to the segrega-tionists and the capitalist establishment,Washington sat on the podium withTeddy Roosevelt himself. Capitalism,Washington claimed, knew no colorline. Of course the truth was quite theopposite. From Booker T. to Jesse J.,black business has been utterly insignifi-cant in the American economy.These fantasies of black capitalistsuccess in America are the product of ablack middle-class elite which is trappedin racist America. This small but visiblegroup tries to escape identification withthe black masses in order to identifywith the white capitalist class. In thewords of black sociologist E. FranklinFrazier, these "black bourgeois" live in a"world of make believe." In his trench-ant analysis, Black Bourgeoisie ( 1957),Frazier rips through the pretensions,lies, delusions, escapism and desperatefutile craving for bourgeois acceptanceby this black middle-class elite whichlives off crumbs and philanthropy whileit spits upon the aspirations of the blackmasses.Booker T. Washington preached abrand of social and economic moraluplift for the black masses. And JesseJackson is indeed the continuation anddegeneration of that miserable traditionof accommodationist make-believe.One hears the echoes of Booker T.Washington set to a rap beat as Jacksontours the ghetto schools of this country."Up with hope-down with dope,""Learn, baby, learn" not "Burn, baby,burn"-Jackson's self-help message,like Washington's a century ago, is thatthrough individual effort blacks canovercome the barriers of racism. Thisdenies the fundamentally social charac-ter of racism and capitalism, and ineffect blames blacks for the lack ofopportunity in this racist land, foreverything from drugs to crime toilliteracy.Jackson's answer to the lousy schoolswhich don't teach, the hospitals whichdon't cure, the unlivable housing? Youcan be a big success just like me. LikeBooker T. Washington, Jackson offershimself as the example of up-from-civil-rights bootstrap moralism: "From theouthouse to the state house!" "I amsomebody!" chants Jackson. "Alwaysrespect me, never neglect me! Give memine!" Me, me, me. Just as the NationalNegro Business League pushed the liethat blacks could become successfulblack Rockefellers if they just tried hardenough, Jackson tells them they can bepresident. The real message, then andnow. is: the system works, why don'tyou')But the myth of "black capitalism"can't be sold in the ghettos today, so,"A Booker T. Washingtonin Bell-Bottoms"Jesse Jackson is widely known amongblacks-including many who supporthis campaign-as a hustler. Racists likeChicago's Democratic alderman "FastEddie" Vrdolyak say the same. Vrdo-Iyak no doubt prefers the big-timeswindlers-white capitalist politicianslike the "independently wealthy"Rockefellers and Kennedys, who madetheir fortunes by starving and exploitingwhole continents and thus don't dependon handouts. But capitalism in theUnited States is white racist to the core.There aren't going to be any blackRockefellers. That is why "Mr. BlackCapitalism" isn't even a bona fidecapitalist, he's a broker for whitecapitalist corporations in their exploita-tion of the ghetto. A critical mid-'70sbiography of Jackson remarked:"To the establishment press he served afunctional purpose. After the 1968rioting. there were people dying. andeven more impressive. $10 millionworth of white property had beendestroved.. ,. The white establishmentneeded a neutralizer for the ardentrhetoric of burn. babv. burn. What thevneeded was a Booker T, Washington inbell-bottoms ... who could out rap H.Rap Brown. but someone with moreorderlv oratorv who could lead themilitants awa::/ from the onslaught ofproperty to another front. If Jacksonwanted to bovcott tortv A&P stores inthe ghetto. so what') There were 400 ofthem in and around the Chicagoarea.... Jackson offered an alternativethe whites could live with."-Barbara Reynolds. JesseJacksoll: nie Mall. theMmell1ellt. the Mrth (1975)For the past several years the Ameri-can left has been moving to the right,especially under the pressure of the anti-Soviet war drive. The Jackson cam-paign is a further and important shifttoward the reintegration of the left intothe historically dominant party ofAmerican imperialism. Twenty yearsago under the impact of the mass civilrights struggles and escalating imperial-ist war in Vietnam, a generation ofyoung radicals, black and white, brokewith' the party of John F' Ke'nriedy,Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace.Unfortunately most of those who talkedof building a "Marxist-Leninist" partywere trapped in the dead ends ofMaoism-Stalinism and black national-ism. Today many of these same radicals,long become cynical, have returned tothe party of Teddy Kennedy, WalterMondale and Wallace.$2.50

WllAr$l1WE:=l'll(fUlAC U8ERAlDl? II II8IecfI":""'" .. o'0.ca.>:;:Party (NBIPP), a stillborn coalition of"black unelected officials" which hasnever run a candidate independent ofthe twin capitalist parties and which willno doubt end up supporting Jacksonjust as they did Harold Washington.Marxists, who fight for the revolu-tionary independence of the workingclass and oppressed minorities from thecapitalist parties, can sometimes use thetactic of critical support, calling forvotes to a candidate who on key issuesechoes the demands and interests of tileworkers and ghetto masses. WhenSNCC militants formed the LowndesCounty, Alabama Black Panther Partyin 1965-66, the Spartacist Leaguegreeted this as "a step forward inasmuchas it was consciously organized inopposition to the Democratic Party"("Black and Red," Spartacist No. 10,May-June 1967). The better-knownBlack Panther Party based in Oakland,California was another expression ofblack militancy, and when the Panthersran Huey Newton, Bobby Seale andKathleen Cleaver as candidates in 1968California elections, the SL called forvotes to them (but not to their runningmates of the petty-bourgeois Peace andFreedom Party). However, just to listsuch examples of independent blackpolitical action vividly counterposesthem to Jesse Jackson-yesterday's Mr.Black Capitalist and today's doormatfor Mondale who is running againstblack struggle and for the racistDemocrats.Jacksonhustles theblack vote forthe Democratsat August 27rally inWashington,D.C.A SpertadsI Pamphlet 25<25Black Historyand theIBfS,$truggle

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tleedsBlaCk leadership-For Black LiberationThrough Socialist Revolution!JesseJackson...(continued from page 7)playing, and losing, this shell game for along time-ever since FOR's New Dealin the 1930s. For the sake of unity withthe "anti-fascist people's front" (read,the racist Democratic Party) in theSecond World War the CP evenopposed the struggle against JimCrow-for example, sabotaging the1941 March on Washington movementagainst segregation in the armed forcesand war industries. Despite its all-outsupport to U.S. imperialism in WWII(including cheering the A-bombing ofHiroshima and Nagasaki), during theCold War witchhunt under the liberalDemocrat Truman its members werepurged, hounded and imprisoned. Butthese Stalinists never learn. Today theyare embracing Mondale, protege of thevicious witchhunter Hubert Humphrey.And they push Jesse Jackson, who saysintegration is unimportant as he em-braces George Wallace.While the CP and Michael Harring-ton's social democrats (DSA) comeright out and say that Jackson is aMondale vote-getter, no less cynicalfake-lefts like Jerry Tung's ex-MaoistCWP have gone whole-hog for theJackson candidacy pretending that "themovement" is somehow a challenge to"the system" from within. Nonsense.The "Rainbow Coalition" is what theDemocratic Party has been about sinceRoosevelt's New Deal coalition. TheDemocrats have been the predominantparty of American capitalism in themodern era precisely because they havebeen able to tie organized labor, theethnic minorities and various middle-class liberal constituencies to imperial-ism and the existing social order.Historically it has been the war party ofAmerican capitalism because it canmobilize broader popular support thanthe Republicans, widely recognized as aparty of big business interests. Jackson'sfunction is to help restore the Demo-cratic Party to its accustomed positionby winning back blacks disaffectedduring the wretched Carter/ Mondaleyears.The ex-Trotskyist and now explicitlyanti-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party(SWP), meanwhile, is trying to get asclose to the Jackson campaign as it canwithout formally endorsing it. Whilepublishing some critical material onJackson for the record and entering aformal disclaimer, the SWP advocates"intervening in the movement he seeksto use to renovate the DemocraticParty" (Militant, II November [empha-sis in original]). Not opposing Jackson'scandidacy, mind you, just "intervening"in it, calling on Jackson to "break withthe Democratic party and run as anindependent." The SWP would like touse as the vehicle for this charade theNational Black Independent Political8 WORKERS VANGUARDCoca-Cola's Man in the GhettoI Have a Scheme"covenants" Jackson brokers for.What blacks don't get through PUSHis jobs or housing or integratedschools.Although he started out pushing"black products," Jesse Jackson soonstepped up from small-time outfitssuch as Johnson beauty products orJoe Louis Milk to brokering the bigdeals such as "convincing" Coke(under threat of boycott) to increase itsblack bottling franchisers and black-owned distributors and put more of itsprofits in black-owned banks. For theCoca-Cola capitalists, of course, it'splain good business. And the povertypimpsge( t'akin' care 'Of too: Forinstance, the $250,000 Coke promisedto various black organizations as partof the deal (Chicago Daily Defender,10 August 1981).Putting the arm on the "privatesector" has become more importantJesse Jackson first came to publicprominence in 1966 when MartinLuther King's Southern ChristianLeadership Conference (SCLC) cameto Chicago to campaign for integratedhousing. "Segregation City" was to bethe test case for bringing the civil rightsmovement North. Instead it turned outto be the death of the movement. whichhad no answer to the mass unemploy-ment. desperate poverty and de factosegregation of the Northern ghettos-conditions deeply rooted in Americancapitalism which could not be solvedwith a new civil rights bill.With the racists in the streets ofCicero and Marquette Park andentrenched in Boss Daley's Democrat-ic city hall, King signed the toothlessPalmer House agreement and calledoff a scheduled open housing march.With a paper accord in his pocket, theliberal black preachers left town. AsAndrew Young explained, "None of uswanted to spend another day inChicago. We wanted to go home to theSouth to familiar terrain." Jacksonwas left in charge of SCLC's OperationBreadbasket.Jesse Jackson's conclusion from thedefeat of the liberal-led movement wasto abandon the struggle for integrationand equality. Instead he sought to gethis "cut" together with the rest of theparasites who live off the ghetto. Hisslogan then was not black power but"green power." And since then Jack-son has spent most of the past decadeand a half organizing various "blackcapitalism" scams. While his PeopleUnited to Save Humanity (PUSH) hascollected millions of dollars over theyears, the main beneficiaries of hisschemes have not been the blackmasses, but those who grease Jack-son's palm.Jackson is Coca-Cola's man in theghetto, and just about every othermulti-billion multinational's. FQr theright price J.J. pushes black people tobuy everything from Kentucky FriedChicken to Avon cosmetics to Quakeroatmeal. "Burger King is helpingbusiness take on a new complexion,"boasts the hamburger chain of its new"relationship" with Jackson. TheseBig RedJesse Jackson celebrates 1982 "covenant" with Uncola (Seven-Up) bossEdward Frantel.loudly publicized multi-million dollar"covenants" or "trade agreements"with giant corporations, like the $34million PUSH deal with Coca-Cola in1981, or the $10 million deal withHeublein/ Kentucky Fried Chicken in1982 are the core of Jackson's econom-ic program."Cut us in," Jackson demanded ofA&P executives back in the '60s whenas head of Operation Breadbasket hefirst began to boycott supermarkets,demanding the owners stock goods ofblack producers on the shelves. And"cut us in" is what Jackson and PUSHare aU about-"us"being ,the blackbusinessmen who lead a parasiticalexistence feeding off the ghettos. Forthe $500 a year they kick into PUSH's"International Trade Bureau" theseblack auto dealers, insurance agents,undertakers, advertising firms, radiostations, etc., get their "cut" of thefor Jackson of late, since federalfunding of poverty operations like hisChicago-based PUSH have beendrying up. This summer, no doubtlinked to Reagan's own electoralpurposes, the U.S. government beganapolitically motivated audit of thenearly $4 million worth of federalgrants to PUSH over the years.Meanwhile the giant St. Louis-basedAnheuser-Busch brewery decided itcould face down Jackson's publicitybarrage. When Jackson came to townto put the squeeze on Bud, the blackSt. Louis Sentinel wrote that his"kickback approach" amounted to a"shakedown." Jackson slapped themwith a $3 million libel suit, butwithdrew it when asked to producePUSH's financial records in court.After a year of boycott, he andAnheuser-Busch reached an informal"compromise."In all of the "covenants" Jacksonhas brokered (which, if you believe hisfigures, amounts to many millions ofdollars and dozens of agreements withleading corporations), the number ofjobs for black working people isminuscule. It's like playing three-cardmonte. Noah Robinson, Jackson'shalf-brother and former associate atBreadbasket described the Operationfairly honestly:"We used to throw out figures like wegot 400 jobs worth $4 million orsomething like that. but it's a safe betnobody could yauch for more than100 jobs because we were moving toofast to check."And as Jackson's critical biographer,Barbara Reynolds, described PUSH,"either as an oversight or intentionally,jobs for the black worker are beingdeemphasized, a pattern traceable inpacts from 1968 to the present. Dollarvalue for jobs in the General Foodspact is about 1/1 OOth in comparison tobenefits for black firms" (Jesse Jack-son: The Man., The Movement, TheMyth [1975]).Just as for years Jackson hasbrokered the black dollar for the whitecapitalist, today he brokers the blackvote for the racist capitalist Democrat-ic Party.Jackson is selling the myth of "blackpower" through the Democratic Party.And just as the black accommodation-ists of Booker T. Washington's dayaccepted and presumed a market exclu-sively of blacks to exploit for blackentrepreneurism, Jackson's brand ofpolitical accommodation embracessegregation to broker the black vote.And it is on this issue that Jackson helpsto disorganize the most basic strugglesof the black masses for equality. That isone reason why Jackson has no problemembracing the arch-segregationistGeorge Wallace, or going down to aNorfolk, Virginia busing march lastMay to proclaim, "I am not in townmarching for desegregation. I ammarching for the voter registrationboost."Jesse Jackson combines the worstaspects of the tradition of petty-bourgeois accommodationism. E.Franklin Frazier describes the accom-modationist black politician who "mayeven mobilize the masses to vote againsttheir economic interests":"In his role as leader. the Negropolitician attempts to accommodate thedemands of'the Negro masses to hispersonal interests which are tied up withthe political machines. He may securethe appointment of a few middle-classl"egroes to positions in the municipalgmernment. But when it comes to thefundamental interests of the Negromasses as regards employment. hous-ing. and health. his position is deter-mined by the political machine whichrepresents the propertied classes of thewhite community."-Black BilllrgcoisicAt bottom it is unfair to the man fromTuskegee to compare him to thePUSHer. Both Washington and Jack-16 DECEMBER 1983son responded to important defeats: thedemise of radical Reconstruction andthe defeat of the civil rights movement.Both drew pessimistic conclusions. Butin Washington's day the black popula-tion was overwhelmingly rural, stilllorded over by the old plantationmasters of the antebellum South. Todayit is located in the heart of the Northerncities, at the center of Americanindustry.The same capitalist forces whichcreated enough of a black ghetto marketfor Jesse Jackson to broker for Coca-Cola and Burger King, also created ablack proletariat. This provides thebasis for united class struggle, forrevolutionary integrationism, which iskey in the fight for black liberation.Jesse Jackson's so-called "FreedomTrain" for the Democrats diverts theblack masses from their tremendouspotential power in the class struggle.American Workers RevolutionNeeds Black LeadershipNever before has the choice facingblack America been more sharply posedbetween struggle and accommodation.The path of accommodation, Jackson-style, runs through Democratic Partyelectoralism. And it is directly counter-posed to the militant labor and blackstruggle which is so desperately needed.The horror of conditions for blackpeople today makes it absolutely clearthat Jackson's electoral small change isa cruel hoax. It is actually worse for theblack masses today than at the height ofthe Great Depression. Look at theghettos. Look at the way blacks live anddie. Infant mortality rates rival ThirdWorld countries. A black male inAmerican cities has only a three-out-of-five chance to make it to age 25. Thisgives him less chance than a combatsoldier in World War II. The impotentBEOs couldn't begin to crack thisoppression even if they wanted to, whichthey don't.The lack of jobs and continuedslashing of even minimal social servicescontinue to rip away at the social fabricin the ghetto. Over the past 20 yearsmore and more black families have beendriven below the poverty line. Expen-sive studies are done to "prove" that themeager welfare system has eroded the"work ethic" among black people. Andfrom Daniel Moynihan to Jesse Jack-son, the bourgeois politicians blame theblack family itself for the ravages ofghetto poverty. No wonder there are somany one-parent black families headedby women: the New York Times (20November) cites the catastrophic statis-tic that ':rewer than half of adult blackmen in the country have jobs" (ouremphasis).Nothing short of socialist revolutioncan end the misery thrust upon capital-ism's reserve army of the unemployed,which in the U.S. is overwhelminglyblack and increasingly Latin. The fightagainst massive layoffs must be met withmassive labor action which brings theghetto unemployed into the struggle.Organize the unorganized! For sit-downs not soup lines!Separate but equal will never be equalin this racist capitalist society. Ghettoschools are turning out functionallyilliterate black youth at an alarmingrate. While chanting "learn, baby,learn" to black kids in prison-likeschools, Jesse Jackson has turned hisback on struggles for integration andquality education. The Trotskyists fightfor labor/black defense to defendbusing against racist mobs! Extendbusing into the suburbs!Rising Klan terror, just like cutbackson social programs and takebacks forthe unions, are a reflection of theeconomic crisis and the anti-Soviet wardrive. The racist killers must be met withthe power of labor/black mobilizations.What we need is the kind of action thatstopped the KKK in Washington, D.C.on November 27 last year. The Sparta-cist League initiated and was theprincipal organizer of the 5,000-strongoverwhelmingly black and working-class Labor/Black Mobilization whichprevented the racist terrorists frommarching through the capital. Thatsuccessful mobilization-which wasopposed by the BEOs-saved blacklives from the firebombers and cross-burners and lynchers. Jackson on theother hand is the candidate of theAugust 27 "answer" to such struggle: anempty celebration of defeat whose "IHave a Dream" rhetoric was for aDemocrat in the White House in '84.Whenever and wherever blacks needto struggle for their own survival theBEOs are there to tell them: don't fight,register Democratic. When Jacksonwent to the cradle of the Confederacy toembrace racist George Wallace, hedeliberately ignored Montgomery'sracist frame-up of the courageousTaylor family. "Now is not the time toexplode" was his stock answer. But thecontinued on page 109Give Black D.C. the Vote!WASHINGTON, D.C.-"So much fordemocracy in D.C." That was a 22 No-vember Washington Post editorial com-ment on recent Reagan administrationmoves to eliminate any shred of "homerule" for the nation's capital. The WhiteHouse is working hand in glove withCongress to keep basic voting rights outof the hands of D.C.'s 70 percent blackpopulation. In particularthe administra-tion is claiming that proposed D.C.legislation lowering minimum prisonsentences would threaten the safety ofgovernment executives, foreign officials,tourists and U.S. property in Washing-ton. Ronald Reagan wants some of thatold plantation justice down on thePotomac River.On September 6 the Washington citycouncil voted unanimously to prohibitcity investments in corporations doingbusiness with racist South Africa.Although dozens of city and stategovernments as well as universities haveadopted this liberal moralistic measure,which does nothing to concretely aid thestruggle of blacks to smash the murder-ous apartheid state, the city council voteimmediately brought "strong warningsfrom Capitol Hill that passage of themeasure could open up a Pandora's Boxof controversy over [D.C.] home ruleitself" ( Washington Post. 7 September).The American ruling class does not likeblack Washington "talking back"to U.S.allies like white supremacist SouthAfrica.This outrageous bit of blackmailshows the government's historic con-tempt for the people of this black city.who do the real work-at miserably lowwages-to keep the capital (and thetourist attractions) running. As far backas 1831, the city council approved WhiteHouse architect James Hoban's resolu-tion to abolish the slave trade in theDistrict, only to be struck down by thecourts the following year. "One man, onevote" has never applied to the center ofthe "free world." According to a 1978Library of Congress study, out of 115countries with elected national legisla-tures, the U.S. is alone in denyingrepresentation to the citizens of itscapital city. Only since 1961 have D.C.voters been able to vote for president.Ten years later, D.C. got one. non-voting"delegate" in Congress. In 1973 camethephony "Home Rule Act." While the newcharter created an elected mayor and citycouncil, it made their every act, fromlegislation to the budget and taxation,subject to Congressional veto. Now,since a Supreme Court ruling in Junestriking down Congressional vetoes, theJustice Department has sought toincrease White House control over itsfiefdom by proposing that any changes inthe District's criminal code be affirma-tively approved by both Houses, as wellas by the president.Of course, when Mayor Marion Barrysets his cops on black workers and youthmobilized against the KKK. his masterson Pennsylvania Avenue nod theirapproval. But when the city councilmakes even a gesture against the U.S."free world" allies in white-ruled SouthAfrica, then down comes the hammer.As revolutionaries. we do not supportliberal divestment schemes. Todivest thesecurities of firms doing business withSouth Africa has no effect at all on thefight against apartheid, while it serves toprettify U. S. capitalist imperialism.Reagan's America is a far greater enemyof mankind than its junior partner in theanti-Soviet war drive, Botha's SouthAfrica. However, black people in D.C.and elsewhere have the right to expresstheir hatred for the apartheid policestate. even if they choose a misguidedway to do so.We oppose the blatantly undemocrat-ic denial of voting rights in D.C. TheSpartacist League supports the D.C.Voting Rights Amendment, whichwould give Washington two senatorsand one Congressman, with votes. It's nosurprise that the amendment seemsheaded for defeat like the Equal RightsAmendment (ERA) for women. In thisperiod of right-wing reaction. votingrights for blacks are under attack. fromD.C. to the Deep South.But we warn Washington blacks thatDemocrats like D.C. delegate WalterFauntroy. who faithfully serve in Rea-gan's war on the urban poor, are theenemies within of black liberation. It wasFauntroy who took the lead in attackingthe SL-initiated Labor/Black Mobiliza-tion which brought out the best blackmilitants in Washington and stopped theKian from marching in the capital on 27November 1982. In contrast to theAugust 27 crawl for the Democrats,this successful action showed the wayforward in D.C. and throughoutthe country. Finish the Civil War!Black liberation through socialistrevolution! Martin Luther King's Blood on His Shirt?Jesse Jackson's Disgusting Lie"memorial session" of the city council(the racist bourgeois politicians whohad blocked MLK's every effort toachieve open housing in "SegregationCity" and who practically ran theliberal civil rights leader out of town)to plead for calm: "I am calling fornonviolence ... put your rocks down,put your bottles down" (BarbaraReynolds, Jesse Jackson: The Man.the Movement, the Myth [1975]).Jesse Jackson is always looking outfor Number One. He wants to coverhimself with the blood of King'smartyrdom and the mantle of the civilrights movement, in order to opposestruggle today. As Chauncey Eskridge,King's attorney, remarked, "Jackson'sappearance at Chicago's City Councilwith that blood on his shirt was notonly deception but sacrilege."rt-NJlliIiiIiII- ~ - ..,Wide WorldJesse Jackson, Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy in Memphis on theeve of King's assassination.yard telling the press. "I was the lastman in the world to be with Rev. Kingbefore he was shot and I spoke to himlast." I just jumped on Jess physicallybecause he was telling lies. I lost mycool. 1started beating on him.'"That evening we called a meeting, topledge our support to Dr. King. Jesseclaimed he was sick. The next morninghe showed up on the "Today" showtelling the same story. He used thedeath of Dr. King to suit himself'."Barbara Reynolds, Jesse Jackson'scritical biographer, noted that "Jack-son had returned to Chicago inflames." On the west side ghettobuildings, street lights, businesses wentup in smoke as angry blacks ventedtheir outrage at the hideous assassina-tion of America's best known blackleader. Mayor Richard Daley orderedthe police to "shoot to kill" any rioter.That night Jackson attended a KingWhen Jesse Jackson sat down toiced tea and pecan rolls with GeorgeWallace. the man who stood on theAlabama capito! steps vowing "Segre-gation Forever," it turned the stomachof every race-conscious black person inAmerica. Jackson was the man whomPlayboy (November 1969) had pro-claimed "the fiery heir apparent toMartin Luther King." But as King'sclosest associates will tell you, vividlyremembering how Jackson capitalizedon the racist murder, J.J.is capable ofanything.On April 4, 1968 King was assassi-nated by a sniper's bullet as he stoodon the balcony of the Lorraine Motelin Memphis, where he had gone tosupport a sanitation men's strike. Asan article in the Washington Post(31 July) recounted:"Within a fe\\ dav, of King'sa",a,sll1ation. reports hegan circul?tt-ing that Jesse Jackson said he \\as onthe balcom of the Lorraine Motel\\ith King \..hcn he wa, ,hot. that heheld the dying man. that he wore hishlood on his ,hirt."The Chicago Defender. a blackne\\spaper. reported on April X. 196X.that Jachon. whose face appeareddrawn, talked brieflv with nev:smenabout the moments - just before andafter the shooting occllrred. He said herushed to Dr. King's side immediately.but got no response when he asked"Doc. can vou hear me')'""A vear later. in an interview withJackson. Playboy magazine said: 'Hewas talking to King on the porch of theLorraine Motel in Memphis when thefatal shot was fired and cradled thedying man in his arms.'"The Washington Post reported: 'Hewas the man standing next to the Rev.Martin Luther King Jr. when Dr.King was gunned down on a Memphisbalcony in 1968:"Those who were present do not recallthe events that wav.'''' never saw him" near the balcony:savs Hosea Williams. then a voterregistration project director for King.and now a Georgia state legislator.'The first person who got to King wasRalph Abernathy. the second wasAndy Young. the third was'an Africanjournalist. I was the fourth person. Dr.King was taken to the hospital andthen came the announcement that hewas dead. Jesse was out there in theJesseJackson...(cant inued from page 9)defense of the Taylors-who disarmedracist nightriders attacking theirhome-helps to defend every black inthe South against racist terror. Andthat defense demands massive labor/black mobilizations from Detroit toMontgomery.The black question in the U.S. is thequestion of revolution. The liberalintegrationism of the civil rights move-ment was doomed to failure as soon as itwent North and came smack up againstthe economic reality of black oppressionin capitalist America. Today blackdefeatism is represented by Jesse Jack-son and the BEOs as "black power."When the call for "black power" wasfirst sounded by young SNCC civilrights activists in the mid-'60s, it wasraised against the liberalism and accom-modationism then represented by Mar-tin Luther King, but it quickly degener-ated into black nationalist utopianism.What was needed then and now was aleadership which could mobilize realpower, organizing the struggle againstblack oppression on a class basis. Itwould have meant enlisting the unionsto bring the fight for black equality tothe Northern cities, but that required astruggle against the pro-capitalist pro-Democratic Party misleaders of laborwho blocked the struggle againstracism.The black ghetto masses can getpower only as part of a struggle forworkers revolution in the U.S. When200,000 blacks took up arms in the CivilWar which ended slavery, that wasblack power. And the promise of blackequality for which blacks fought in theCivil War must not be betrayed, as itwas when radical Reconstruction waskilled. A proletarian revolution isnecessary to make good on the debt ofblack equality. Finish the Civil War-Forward to a workers state!Because black America can onlyanswer its problems with revolutionarysolutions. the future black leaders willnot be Democratic BEOs or ghettohustlers like Jesse Jackson. They will besocialist revolutionaries, forged in thepolitical fight against the Jesse Jacksonsand his reformist "left" cheerleaders.The American workers revolution needsblack leadership! Join the SpartacistLeague!.11 WORKERS VANGUARDClass StruggleSharpens...(continued from page 2)ington, D.C.-and we stopped them.We stopped them by building masslaborI black mobilizations against theirrace-hate parades.;\; at everything we touch turns togold. We've lost a few. There's the KeithAnwar case, a steel worker brother inChicago's Inland plant who respectedthe lines of another striking local [andwas fired for it]. There was a broad layerof support for that case; they raisedthousands of dollars to take it to the:'\iLRB. And the1\LRB.infact.cameupwith the decision that they had wronglyfired this man. But because the companyand government were both fighting thiscase, a U.S. Appeals Court merturnedthat decision.To revive the traditions of the labormovement, that picket lines mean don'tcross, that's basically what our cam-paign in the transit union has been.There's a certain opening there nowbecause Arnold Cherry. who formerlyran as an opponent of[TWU Local 100president] John Lawe, has now cavedin. He wanted a post. What Cherry hasdone is a lot of red baiting and anti-communism. But everybody knows thatthe Transport Workers Union was builtby the Communist Party. The mainthing that guy has done. just like themain thine Lme has done. is to go outand \ ,Hes tur the his is the party of Koch. theracist strikebreaker \\ho Imes to hateus. I his IS the party of Cuomo who hasbrought us CIA spymaster Kiley to runthe subways. What these people in theunions [Lawe and Cherry] represent isthat kind of politics.We don't think this is going to besettled by an election. It's going to besettled by struggles. Reagan is bringingthe war home and he's got a big stickfor everybody, whether it's the ATUor the people in EI Salvador or thePalestinians.Defend the Soviet Union! /They are tripping on their "Grenadahigh" now. The problem is that whilethey're tripping, they might just get usinto a war that blows us all sky-high. Wejust had a trip by [Israeli prime minister]Shamlr to this country, which wasbasically a green light to Israel to goahead in the Middle East. They signed aU.S.-Israel strategic pact. which wasexplicitly stated as an alliance againstSoviet interests in the 1\ear East. Youhave joint war .plans against Syria byIsrael and the United States. So the1\ear East is one of the trip-wire placesfor World War III right now.We believe the Soviet Union shouldbe defended because it embodies thegains of the first successful workersrevolution. It's the industrial andmilitary powerhouse which holds impe-ria list countries like the United States atbay. Cuba wouldn't be here today if theSmiets weren't there and had nucleararmaments. Vietnam wouldn't be heretodav.Contrary to all the things you read inthe papers, the problem with theStalinist leadership [of the SovietUnion] is not that they foment "redrevolution" all over the globe. Theproblem is they conciliate the imperial-ists, thinking that we can all live happilytogether, meanwhile sacrificing every-body else's revolution for their own littleinterests.But there is something in Russiadespite this fact-the gains of thatrevolution, the collectivized economy-that has to be defended by workers thereand workers in this country. Basically,it's the same problem you've got with theunions. We want to get rid of the leadersover in the Soviet Union just like wewant to get rid of the [union] leaders inthis country. But you don't throw thebaby out with the bath water.Everybody saw "The Day After" orheard about it. They scared the hell outof people, rightly so, because whileyou're watching it on TV, they'reputting the missiles in Britain andGermany. And these guys will do it.These characters in the Reagan ad minis-tration really think you can win alimited nuclear war.Everybody's talking about the "Viet-nam syndrome." One of the reasons whyis because the U.S. lost. So they can bebeaten The Vietnamese heat the l'.S.on the hattlefield. \\'hat \\<h importantabout Vietnam \\ ithin this C<luntn \\asthat you sa\\ \\ Ide la\ ers of the popula-tion go into opposition to the war. Itstarted with the students, but it hap-pened in the armed forces, too, and inthe end many of the unions. At the sametime you had tremendous inflation andbig strike waves. One of the things theSpartacist League fought for at the timewas labor political strikes against thewar. And had that dragged on longer,you would have seen the possibility forlabor political strikes against the war inthis country.It's better to get them from within. Ifwe end up in a nuclear war. it's curtains.You have to have a workers party thatcan organize the opposition that existsout there to war. We're not talkingabout paper resolutions and windbagspeeches. When they want to sendmilitary goods to Lebanon, the trans-port workers don't load them. Whenthey want to send military goods to EISalvador. they don't mo\e. That's thekind of actions that labor unions cantake that can actually help deter war.What you need is a party to organizethat working-class opposition. It's gotto be an integrated party and it's got tofight around the kind of issues we'vetalked about here tonight-defenseagainst racist terror, defense of thepicket line-on an anti-capitalist pro-gram. And that's what the SpartacistLeague-though few in number-hasshown itself dedicated to doing.SPARTACIST LEAGUE LOCAL DIRECTORY11scrawled on the back of official ATUsigns and taken up in chants by themarchers on December 3.The bureaucrats have enlisted thesupport of the fake "left" in setting up aphony strike support committee. Sup-porters of the Socialist Workers Partyand its endless string of expellees. theCommunist Party. the Workers WorldParty and others collect food andmoney. parrot the bureaucrats' line for aconsumer boycott, etc.-anuhillg hutenforce the picket line and stop thescabs! At the meeting prior to theDecember 3 rally, for instance, SWPsupporter Don Harmon of DepartmentStore Clerks Local 1100 made the mainproposal for a "peaceful" rally andmarch. Needless to say. no floor dis-cussion was allowed.The bureaucrats' waterboys wereclearly upset that the December 3 marchgot "out of hand," so at the December 5strike support meeting Seymour Kra-mer, an official in the UTU. called formore "monitors" to police the pickets atthe upcoming rallies. Meanwhile Har-mon officially put off considering thegeneral strike idea until January! At thenext rally on December 10, ex-SWPsupporter Jeff Mackler (now a support-er of "Socialist Action") helped policethe crowd for the cops and bureaucratsas a line of goons kept the crowd wellaway from the terminal. Striking work-ers afterwards told WVthat bureaucratswere smearing the S L and its supportersas "rabble rousers," Well, we're proudthat we are recognized as the fighters forclass-struggle action. We say: Picketlines mean don't cross! Shut downtransport-Not one bus! Not one train!Not one plane!.$20.00 per volume Order from/makE: checks payable toSpartaclst Publishing Co Box 1377 GPO. New York, New York 10116Vol. 1 WV Nos. 1-34 Vol. 6 WV Nos. 139-162 Vol. 11 WV Nos. 247-270Nov. 1970-Dec. 1973 7 Jan.-17 June 1977 11 Jan.-12 Dec. 1980Vol. 2 WV Nos. 35-58 Vol. 7 WV Nos. 163-186 Vol. 12 WV Nos. 271-295Jan.-Dec. 1974 24 June-23 Dec. 1977 2 Jan.-18 Dec. 1981Vol. 3 WV Nos. 59-89 Vol. 8 WV Nos. 187-204 Vol. 13 WV Nos. 296-320Jan.-Dec. 1975 6 Jan.-5 May 1978 8 Jan.-31 Dec. 1982Vol. 4 WV Nos. 90-114 Vol. 9 WV Nos. 205-221 Vol. 14 WV Nos. 321-3442 Jan.-18 June 1976 12 May-15 Dec. 1978 14 Jan.-16 Dec. 1983Vol. 5 WV Nos. 115-138 Vol. 10 WV Nos. 222-246 [in preparationI25 June-24 Dec 1976 5 Jan.-28 Dec. 1979millions to militant and victoriousstruggle. Striking workers throughoutthis country defending their picket lineswill not forget the murder of RayPhillips! Down with the sellout con-tract! For a nationwide transport strike!Bust the union-busters! Victory to theATU!.(continued from page 5)Caucus in the CWA and the MilitantCaucus in the ILWU. Our slogans-"On Strike, Shut It Down!" and "PicketLines Mean Don't Cross!"-were hand-BeatGreyhound...